


in my heart there was a kind of fighting (that would not let me sleep)

by diasterisms



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 18:06:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5550200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diasterisms/pseuds/diasterisms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They kill Snoke together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in my heart there was a kind of fighting (that would not let me sleep)

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [the double-agent-Kylo-Ren theory](http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/seriously-dont-click-this-if-you-havent-seen-tfa-yet#.fkExKG5Y2). Originally posted on [Tumblr](http://kylorenvevo.tumblr.com/post/135807627971/in-my-heart-there-was-a-kind-of-fighting-that).

_“Do you understand what I am asking of you?”_

_“Yes. I must infiltrate the Sith—”_

_“Not infiltrate. Become.”_

*

They kill Snoke together, blue lightsaber slicing down the giant’s spine as Rey dives like an X-wing, fall slowed by the dig of her weapon into bone and flesh, red lightsaber slashing the giant’s legs out from underneath as Kylo Ren spins and screams while his mind lashes at the pillars of the fortress, collapsing them with the sheer brunt of his rage. He is out of control, his power raw and crackling, desperate to finish this.

Somewhere in the world outside, Finn’s laying siege to enemy formations and weapons bases with his ground troops as Poe Dameron’s starfighter squadrons bring down the remaining vestiges of the First Order fleet. Rey cannot— _must_ not— allow herself to be distracted by concern for their survival, although part of her fears that, far away and unable to help, she will feel them die, that the cold will cut through her heart as it once had Leia Organa’s, years ago.

Her feet hit the ground, and it’s over. Snoke’s body sags, head bowed, suspended in beams of grayish sunlight that spill through towering windows, the same light that shines off the tears in Kylo Ren’s wild eyes. He’d lost his mask only last month, it had tumbled into fiery fathoms as he and Rey dueled over the lava pits of Mustafar.

The Force moves throughout this vast, already half-wrecked chamber, its dark and weighty currents emanating from the tall, stooped figure clad in black. It chips at stone, warps glass, ripples across the very chains of being. Rey shifts to a defensive stance, prepares herself for whatever madness will be unleashed now that the apprentice has slain the master, now that a new Lord of the Sith has risen.

Into the tense, echoing silence, Kylo Ren breathes, “I killed my father.”

His voice is hoarse and haunted; Rey can tell that this is the first time he’s allowed himself to say these words— to even _think_ them— since the day Han Solo fell. He repeats the sentence, and it breaks in his mouth.

_There will be a moment when he can be brought back,_ Luke Skywalker had counseled Rey. _Find it, wait for it. I promised Ben that he would have that moment._

But the man doesn’t seem to see her, even though she’s only a few feet away. The red lightsaber blazes at his side, crossguard jagged and bright; he raises his free hand above his head, holds a black-gloved palm up to the ceiling, like a child from a desert planet standing beneath thundercloud skies and waiting for the first touch of rain.

She realizes his intentions a split second too late. “Don’t—”

He _pulls,_ and the entire fortress comes crashing down in waves of stone and glass and red light.

*

_“No one else may know about this. Even you and I must shield ourselves from the other. Your safety hinges on Snoke having no cause to question your allegiance. From the moment you pledge yourself to the First Order, you will be on your own.”_

_“I am ready.”_

_A pause. “If there were any other way—”_

_Shoulders squared, chin lifted. “No sacrifice is too great.”_

_“Careful, young one.” A murmur. “That’s exactly what your grandfather would have said.”_

*

After the war, Rey walks into Kylo Ren’s detention cell, the door sliding shut with a metallic clang. He stands with his back to her, staring at the wall, his dark hair brushing softly against the collar of white medbay-issue robes.

“The next time you try to kill yourself,” she snaps, “I would appreciate it if you refrain from taking me down with you.”

“I was not trying to kill myself.” There’s a hint of sardonic amusement in the deep, smooth tones. “Power was surging within me. It needed a way out.”

There is power here, still, curled in the air as if waiting to pounce. She glances around the cell for any telltale cracks, wonders if the entire headquarters will hold, wonders if she made a terrible mistake in pulling his limp body out from under the ruins of Snoke’s fortress.

“I’m retrieving Luke in a few hours.” She casts the information like bait, waits for… something.

His fists clench. From somewhere off to the right, the bend of metal. Rey watches the walls.

“I do not wish to see Luke Skywalker,” he spits.

“You’re in no position to make demands,” she reminds him. “You remain a prisoner of the Resistance until Luke vouches for you personally.”

“There is no more Resistance. There is no more First Order.”

“You certainly gave up a lot to make it so.”

He faces her at last. The cuts and bruises from the final battle have faded; he is all pale skin and sharp eyes. Dressed in white, he looks younger, but still remote.

“And what have _you_ given up, Jedi?” he asks, glancing at her tunic, at the lightsaber clipped to the band around her waist. “You could have chosen a different life. Perhaps a happier one.” He abruptly changes the subject. “There is another reason Skywalker is coming, the same reason you are in this cell now— to assess me. To judge how I carry the darkness. You all fear that you harbor the new Sith Lord.”

She can’t lie to him, not after everything, not about this. “Do we?”

He shrugs. “I tell no futures. Including my own.”

“Surely after all that you’ve seen, after all that Snoke has forced you to do—”

“Forced?” he echoes, smirking. “Do you think I was some innocent lackey with a heart of gold in all of this? That I gritted my teeth and followed orders while a part of me wept in secret?”

Rey meets his stare, refusing to be thrown off-kilter by his mind games. In truth, she wants nothing more than to eject him into space, but she had promised Luke, and she owes it to Han to try to save his son. “Anything can happen behind a mask.”

“The key word there, Rey,” drawls Kylo Ren, “is ‘anything.’”  

*

_Rainy, lightning-streaked night. The corpses of initiates all around him, the Knights of Ren at his back._

_Endure._

_Crimson comets hurtling towards the Hosnian system. A memory, or a tale of a memory, of something that someone had once said— “As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced”—_

_Endure._

_His father walking towards him, on a bridge, in the dying light. No. Not this. Anything but—_

_Endure._

*

Chewie is in a nostalgic mood as the _Millennium Falcon_ races through the stars to bring Luke back from self-imposed exile.

_I used to hold that infant in my arms,_ he grunts in Shyriiwook. _I loved him as fiercely as I would my own._

“That’s why you didn’t make the killshot,” murmurs Rey. “Even though we didn’t know about the plan back then, and you had every right.”

_I couldn’t do that._ Chewie pounds a hairy fist against his heart. _Not to Han’s boy._

“Tell me about— Ben.” She stumbles over the name. “What was he like, as a child?”

_Quiet. Moody. But eager to learn, to train._ Chewie glances at her. _Hungry, like you. And, even back then, there was a shadow._

“Is that why it had to be him?” Rey wonders, more to herself than to the Wookie. “I mean, it was cruel, wasn’t it? Necessary, I suppose, but cruel. To ask someone to embrace the Dark Side— perhaps it had to be Ben because he was already so inclined.”

_I was not talking about the Dark Side._ Chewie makes a snuffling sound like a laugh, although it’s tinged oddly bitter. _It was always with him, peering over his shoulder, even when he was a boy. It watched everything he did, and judged it wanting— the shadow of Darth Vader._

*

_A frozen tableau, the two of them, slant of blue and red, net of tall trees, dead sun, false night. Her bones, her sinews, pressed against his._

_Endure._

_Pain doubling his vision. He can break this grip, if he tries, but the girl must get away, and Snoke must see only that he’d been overwhelmed._

_The whisper of an old mentor, across the span of years. “It’s all about timing.”_

_Here. Now._

_Unmasked face bowed. A nod to himself, from himself, from the part of him that watches and is still Ben Solo._

_Now._

_Snowflakes in her lashes. Muscles allowed to cave at last, at long last. Red light disappearing into a field of white._

_Surrender._

*

When Leia Organa sees her brother again, the first thing she does is send him sprawling to the ground with a fist to his jaw.

People rush forward, but Rey’s stern glare halts them in their tracks. This is a confrontation decades in the making.

“Your own nephew. My _son!”_ Leia shouts at the crumpled, robed figure, her eyes dim with rage. “My— _Han—”_

“It was never supposed to go that far,” Luke says quietly, avoiding her gaze. “I had not counted on Han— on Han being there.”

“Fool,” Leia snarls. “You should have known I would ask him to bring our son back. You should have known Han would do anything for me.”

He flinches. “I am sorry, Leia. But his death was not in vain, it—”

“Listen to yourself.” Her voice is harsh. “That’s our father talking.”

He falls silent. His sister takes a deep, aching breath, and then holds out a hand to help him to his feet. Their fingers intertwine, and he rises on strained old bones as the wrinkles at the corner of her mouth curve. For a moment, just for a moment, she is the lost princess of Alderaan and he is a little short for a Stormtrooper.

This is the part where Rey begins to understand grace.

*

_“Master—”_

_“Not anymore. Tomorrow you will have a new master.”_

_“Then—” A knot in the throat, swallowed. “_ Uncle. _Uncle, I am afraid.”_

_“She is coming. The one who will help you bring balance. I have seen it. Wait for her, Ben. She will come to you.”_

*

“The Dark Side is… corrosive,” Luke tells Rey. “Continuous exposure to it eats at the soul. If not channeled correctly, it distorts and amplifies even petty grievances and minor obsessions.”

Rey blinks. “What are you saying?”

“I am saying,” sighs Luke, “that, when he was a child, he sympathized with his grandfather’s story and understood his motives. I am saying that he and Han were too different in temperament to form an especially close bond— Han was larger than life, too aggressive for Ben. Snoke recognized all of this and used it to mold him. I am saying that he never could have killed his father if the resentment hadn’t already been there— and that, no matter your intentions at the start, sometimes there can be no return from the darker path.”

“So, that’s it?” There’s an edge to Rey’s tone that she cannot control, because it’s unfair and because Luke Skywalker, of all people, should know about placing heavy burdens on young shoulders. “We can’t bring him back, so we have to destroy him? Could _you_ do that?” _Could I?_

“It may not come to that,” Luke muses. He looks tired. “After all, restoring balance to the Force does not mean eradicating one side of it. On the contrary—”

In the end, after much deliberation on the part of the council, Kylo Ren leaves D’Qar a free man. No one knows what to do with him, what his place in history will be. Whatever stirred in him when he killed Snoke has quietened, and he is neither war hero nor criminal.

Rey had flown them out of the First Order’s base planet on his old command shuttle; it now overlooks a cliff, prepared for launch, sleek and dark against green grass and blue ocean. Standing beside it, she looks up at his slow, measured approach, and they silently regard each other’s burning silhouettes against the sinking sun. His black cloak whips around him in the cold breeze.

“Where will you go?” she asks.

“Korriban.” His eyes roam over her, impassive. “The homeworld.”

“You could—”

“No. You know I cannot. I must learn to commune with this darkness, as you must also learn to live in your light.”

“What if you can’t control it?” she argues. “What if you become like Snoke— like _Vader?”_

The ghost of a rueful smile flickers across his lips. “Then we shall see each other again, won’t we? I leave my destruction in your capable hands.”

He brushes past her on his way to board the ship. It gnaws at her again, that strange connection between them. Everything about this moment is fated, ocean, sunset, the look on his face, the sparks in her veins, the end of the war, the edge of the cliff.

For some reason, feeling like she’s looking for something she cannot name, she reaches out and grabs hold of his sleeve.

He stops. “What do you think of the name Darth Caedus?”

Rey snorts. “I think it sounds stupid.”

He exhales a laugh, rusty and low. Her hand drops back to her side and she starts walking back to headquarters. She does not want to watch him leave.

*

_The echoes of the Supreme Leader’s command to destroy the new generation of Jedi, still ringing in his ears. The stir of darkness inside him, the undeniable excitement at the promise of blood._

_The despair, hollow, paralyzing._

_Someday, there will be a girl. Someday, he will be saved. Master Luke had promised._

_But, for now— black-gloved fingers trace the twisted ridges of a shattered mask._

_“Grandfather, teach me.”_

**Author's Note:**

> In the Expanded Universe, [Jacen Solo](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Darth_Caedus) (who seems to be the inspiration for Kylo Ren's character) takes the name Darth Caedus upon becoming a Sith Lord.
> 
> [Korriban](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Korriban), also known as Moraband, is the original homeworld of the Sith species and considered a sacred planet by the Order.


End file.
